Dystopia wider reading

Question 1

‘Farenheit 451’ - (Ray Bradbury, 1953)

Answer 1

• Presents a future American society where books are outlawed and “firemen” burn any that are found, the protagonist is a disillusioned fireman who dedicated his life to the preservation of literature
• ‘Seashell’ radios - bombarded with government controlled content and it monitors thoughts

Question 2

‘Brave New World’ - (Aldo’s Huxley, 1932)

Answer 2

• Allows the population shallow entertainment and sensory pleasures (sex) to keep them distracted, won’t rebel
• No natural reproduction, human embryos are created and manipulated artificially

Question 3

‘The Children of Men’ - (P.D. James, 1992)

Answer 3

• Mass infertility in the UK, protagonist protects the only known pregnant women

Question 4

‘Dr Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After The Bomb’ - (Phillip K Dick, 1965)

Answer 4

• Set in the USA in the 1980’s, Andrew Gill has been making a delivery and has witnessed a series of nuclear explosions which he judges to be evidence of a war of some sort.
• Survival, Danger, War, Isolation

Question 5

‘The Long Walk’ - (Stephen King, 1979)

Answer 5

• An annual walking contest undertaken by 100 teenage boys, or ‘Walkers’, under the supervision of ‘the Major’. Any boy who stops of otherwise breaks the rules is instantly shot dead; the winner is the sole survivor.
• Survival, Violence

Question 6

‘Swastika Night’ - (Katherine Burdekin, 1937)

Answer 6

• A speculative fiction, in which the Nazi’s won WW2. Women are breeders, kept as cattle.

Question 7

‘The Martian Chronicles’ - (Ray Bradbury, 1950)

Answer 7

• Chronicles the exploration and settlement of Mars, the home of indigenous martians, by Americans leaving an earth devastated by nuclear war

Question 8

‘The Day of the Triffids’ - (John Wyndham, 1951)

Answer 8

• After most people in the world are blinded by an apparent meteor shower, an aggressive species of plant starts killing people.

Question 9

‘The Death of Grass’ - (John Christopher, 1956)

Answer 9

• A new virus has began to kill all forms of grass, including rice and wheat, causing mass famine. England becomes anarchy, and the protagonist has to kill a family to get their bread

Question 10

‘The Wanting Seed’ - (Anthony Burgess, 1962)

Answer 10

• A world suffering from overpopulation, homosexuality, self-sterilisation is encouraged, cannibalism practiced openly

Question 11

‘The Drowned World’ - (J.G Ballard, 1962)

Answer 11

• Natural disasters have caused the temperatures to rise, and the majority of the world to become uninhabitable, other than too evolved species. Human survivors have evacuated to the poles

Question 12

‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ - (Philip K Dick, 1968)

Answer 12

• A nuclear war has left the earth nearly uninhabitable, and animal life has nearly been wiped out. Those who leave earth are given an android like servant, but some androids kills their masters and escape back to earth. Everyone takes part in a ritual called fusion, in order to transmit emotions

Question 13

‘Metro 2033’ - (Dmitry Glukhovsky, 2002)

Answer 13

• Set within the Moscow Metro, where the last survivors hide after a global nuclear holocaust. The protagonist is forced to battle criminal gangs, as he journeys’ to the centre of the metro

Question 14

‘The Road’ - (Cormac McCarthy, 2006)

Answer 14

• The journey of a father and his young son across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and almost all life. Everyone left is suffering from starvation, and even turn to cannibalism

Question 15

‘The Power’ - (Naomi Alderman, 2016)

Answer 15

• Women have developed the power to emit electricity from their hands, creating a matriarchal society, while there is a drug (called glitter) epidemic which makes the power stronger

Question 16

‘The Red Clocks’ - (Leni Zumas, 2018)

Answer 16

• Abortion is once against illegal in America, IVF is banned, and the new Personhood amendment to the constitution, grant’s life, liberty and property rights to every embryo. Follows the narrative five women.